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Ärende: The new house leadership
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Meet the New Boss
The new house leadership
http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110009248

John Murtha and Congress's "culture of corruption."

Wednesday, November 15, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi's endorsement of Rep. John Murtha for
majority leader, the No. 2 position in the Democratic leaderhsip, has roiled
her caucus. "She will ensure that they [Mr. Murtha and his allies] win. This
is hardball politics," Rep. Jim Moran, a top Murtha ally, told the Hill, a
congressional newspaper. "We are entering an era where when the speaker
instructs you what to do, you do it."
But several members are privately aghast that Mr. Murtha, a pork-barreling
opponent of most House ethics reforms, could become the second most visible
symbol of the new Democratic rule. "We are supposed to change business as
usual, not put the fox in charge of the henhouse," one Democratic member
told me. "It's not just the Abscam scandal of the 1980s that he barely
dodged, he's a disaster waiting to happen because of his current behavior,"
another told me.

As for Abscam, a recent book by George Crile, a producer for CBS's "60
Minutes," provides damning evidence that Mr. Murtha escaped severe
punishment for his role in the scandal only because then-Speaker Tip O'Neill
arranged for the House Ethics Committee to drop the charges, over the
objections of the committee's outside prosecutor. The prosecutor quickly
resigned in protest.

Outside observers are equally aghast that Mr. Murtha could win tomorrow's
election. Thomas Mann, a Brookings Institution scholar who is co-author of
"The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back
on Track," told the Los Angeles Times that "John Murtha is not the right
poster child" for a Democratic House that says it wants to sweep away
corruption.

Melanie Sloan, the liberal head of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Washington, was cheered on by Democrats six weeks ago when she helped reveal
the Mark Foley scandal. Now she says that "Ms. Pelosi"s endorsement of Rep.
Murtha, one of the most unethical members of Congress, show that she may
have prioritized ethics reform merely to win votes with no real commitment
to changing the culture of corruption."

Former members are also speaking out. Chris Bell, a former Democratic House
member from Texas who was his party's unsuccessful nominee for governor this
year, told the Washington Post that Mr. Murtha was instrumental in making
Rep. Alan Mollohan of West Virginia the top Democrat on the House Ethics
Committee. Mr. Bell says Reps. Mollohan and Murtha both helped to slow
ethics reform to a crawl for much of the last two years. This spring, Mr.
Mollohan was forced to step down from his Ethics Committee position after
The Wall Street Journal reported that he had underreported personal assets
and steered earmarks to various West Virginia entities founded or controlled
by his close political allies.

Mr. Murtha has also been front and center in the controversy over earmarks,
the individual portions of pork members of Congress often secretly secure
for their districts or favored constituents. Mr. Murtha is the ranking
Democratic member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and for the
past three years has been the House's top recipient of defense industry
cash. Few in Washington are surprised that his lobbyist brother, Robert
"Kit" Murtha, was until his retirement this summer an enormously successful
"earmark specialist" for the Beltway firm KSA Consulting. In recent years,
Kit Murtha brought in a mother lode of earmarks for at least 16 defense
manufacturers with business before the Appropriations Committee.

Last year, the Los Angeles Times reported that "most of KSA's defense
contractor clients hired the firm in hopes of securing funding from Rep.
Murtha's subcommittee, according to lobbying records and interviews. And
most retained the firm after Kit Murtha became a senior partner in 2002."
Kit Murtha told the Times that he saw Rep. Murtha only infrequently, but
said the congressman knew he was a KSA lobbyist. "I don't think that
influences him," Kit said of his brother. "I certainly would hope not."

Mr. Murtha isn't talking much about all of these controversies, no doubt
hoping that the clock will run out on questions about them when Democrats
vote for majority leader tomorrow. For now his surrogates are brushing aside
all inquiries. "There is no substance to it," says Rep. Linda Sanchez of
California, a key Murtha ally. Ms. Pelosi's office will only say that Mr.
Murtha "has addressed these issues." But he really hasn't, and Ms. Pelosi
should know better.

Take the Abscam probe, in which Mr. Murtha was named an unindicted
co-conspirator in the late-1970s FBI sting operation in which agents posed
as Saudi sheiks and offered members of Congress bribes for help in securing
asylum in the U.S. and getting money out of Saudi Arabia. In the end, a U.S.
senator and six representatives accepted the cash and were convicted of
bribery or lesser charges.
I spoke with Mr. Murtha's press secretary last Friday and emailed her
Abscam-related questions. I followed up with a phone call yesterday. She
never responded. Yesterday Mr. Murtha did issue a statement attempting to
deflect questions: "I am disconcerted that some are making headlines by
resorting to unfounded allegations that occurred 26 years ago. I thought we
were above this type of swift-boating attack. This is not how we restore
integrity and civility to the United States Congress"
Mr. Murtha was among those who were offered the Abscam bribe money. He
declined it, but the late columnist Jack Anderson said the Pennsylvania
congressman's conduct was "perhaps the saddest scene on the secret Abscam
videotapes. He refused to take the money, but his reason was hardly noble."
The 54-minute Abscam tape shows Mr. Murtha functioning as a cynical backroom
operator, telling the FBI undercover agents: "You know, you made an offer.
It might be that I might change my mind someday." Later, he explained how
that might happen: "I want to deal with you guys awhile before I make any
transactions at all, period," he told the fake sheiks. "After we've done
some business, well, then I might change my mind. I'm going to tell you
this. If anybody can do it--I am not BSing you fellows--I can get it done my
way. There's no question about it."

Mr. Murtha has said his only interest in the purported Saudi sheiks' money
was that he hoped it would be invested in businesses in his district. But
the full tape makes clear that Mr. Murtha was primarily interested in
talking about such investments as a possible cover should he later decide to
have the money transferred.

"And what I'm sayin' is, a few investments in my district, a few you know,
is big to me, to this guy apparently is not too big, to a couple of banks
which would get their attention. And investment in a business where you
could legitimately say to me--when I say legitimately, I'm talking about so
these bastards up here can't say to me, well, why, in eight years from now,
that's possible, we'd never hear a thing for eight years, but all at once,
ah, some dumb bastard would go start talking eight years from now, ah, about
the whole thing and say, '[expletive], ah, this happened,' then he, then he,
in order to get immunity so he doesn't go to jail, he starts talking and
fingering people and then the [expletive] all falls apart."
The undercover FBI agent in the meeting then spoke up and said "You give us
the banks where you want the money deposited."
"All right" Mr. Murtha responded. "How much money we talking about?"
"Well, you tell me" replied the FBI agent.
A few moments later in the tape, Mr. Murtha continues his discussion of how
"a business commitment" in his district would be structured: "A business
commitment that makes it imperative for me to help him. Just, let me tell
you something. I'm sure if--and there's a lot of things I've done up here,
with environmental regulations, with all kinds of waivers of laws and
regulations. If it weren't for being in the district, people would say,
'Well that [expletive], I'm gonna tell you something this guy is, uh, you
know, on the take.' Well once they say that, what happens? Then they start
going around looking for the [expletive] money. So I want to avoid that by
having some tie to the district. That's all. That's the secret to the whole
thing."

It appears that what Mr. Murtha was referring to was a form of investment
not for the sake of investment, but because "that's the secret" to how you
can take a bribe and get away with it. Mr. Murtha was never indicted for his
role in Abscam, even though he testified in federal court that he had called
his "immigration guy" to determine what could be done to help the fake sheik
with his immigration problems.
But in 1981, the House Ethics Committee became concerned that Mr. Murtha
had, at a minimum, violated House rules that required he report any attempt
at bribery, which he had not. A special prosecutor, Barrett Prettyman, was
appointed to oversee the committee's investigation. He soon expanded his
probe beyond the six House members who were directly involved and began
moving against Rep. Murtha. He was also rumored to be offering deals in
exchange for testimony that would take the scandal inside the office of
Speaker O'Neill.

That was the final straw from the irascible O'Neill. He determined to shut
the investigation down, and the story of how he did it makes up a
fascinating part of Mr. Crile's book, "Charlie Wilson's War" (Atlantic
Monthly Press, 2003). Crile died earlier this year of cancer, but his story
of how the larger-than-life Rep. Charlie Wilson of Texas single-handedly
steered money from the defense subcommittee that Rep. Murtha chaired to the
anti-Soviet mujahadeen in Afghanistan is so riveting that it is being made
into a major motion picture produced by Mike Nichols and starring Tom Hanks
and Julia Roberts.
Crile reported that in early 1981 Speaker O'Neill called Rep. Wilson into
his office and told him he wanted him to join the Ethics Committee right
away. The Texas congressman had been pestering him for years to get a
lifetime seat on the board the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. "It's
the best perk in town," Mr. Wilson told Crile. "It means that I get the box
right next to the president's box for the ballet when I want it. I get to go
to all the cast parties, meet all the movie stars, and I get an extra
invitation to the White House every season."

O'Neill made it clear he would appoint Mr. Wilson to the board he coveted,
but that he would have to join the Ethics Committee to take care of the
Murtha matter. "It's a package deal, Chally," O'Neill is said to have told
Mr. Wilson.
"The word on Charlie was that he didn't talk," ex-Rep. Tony Coelho, who
became majority whip after O'Neill's retirement, told Crile. "From time to
time the speaker needed to mount irregular operations, and Wilson was one of
those irregulars Tip could count on." Mr. Wilson didn't need any prodding
for his task: "He was a happy warrior as he raced to the rescue of his
imperiled friend John Murtha," Crile wrote.
Crile reported that prior to Mr. Wilson's arrival on the Ethics Committee,
it had largely given Mr. Prettyman, the special counsel, a free hand in his
probe. That quickly changed: "Before Prettyman could fully deploy his
investigators to move on the Murtha case, he was informed that the committee
had concluded there was no justification for an investigation." The Ethics
Committee chairman, Rep. Louis Stokes of Ohio, suddenly declared "This
matter is closed."

Mr. Prettyman, who had already likened the Ethics Committee to "a
misdemeanor court faced with a multiple murder," was furious at the dramatic
change of course. He abruptly resigned his post the same afternoon the
committee voted to clear Mr. Murtha. While Mr. Prettyman continues to refuse
to discuss the case, he told Roll Call newspaper in 1990 that it would be "a
logical conclusion" that he resigned over the committee's exoneration of Mr.
Murtha. Crile's book notes that "a teary Murtha had confided to a colleague
that Wilson's effort had saved his life." Crile concludes that the Murtha
"rescue operation" had far-reaching consequences. "For O'Neill the
intervention ended the threat to his hold on the House and unleashed him to
become Ronald Reagan's liberal tormentor."

Two decades later, In 2002, ex-Rep. Don Bailey, a Democrat who had sat on
the Ethics Committee (and who lost to Mr. Murtha in a Democratic primary in
1982, after decennial redistricting put them in the same district) released
a public letter to Mr. Murtha: "I was, to be honest, critical about how you
misled me about Abscam where you convinced me you had voluntarily told
federal agents about the offer of money to you." Mr. Bailey continued: "I
learned later, after I had successfully defeated the ethics charges against
you, that you had merely manipulated the system to cooperate with federal
agents to avoid prosecution."
For his part, Mr. Wilson was quite pleased by his role in burying the Murtha
probe. Crile reported that Mr. Wilson told him he "laughed off the incident
as if it had been an entertainment." Mr. Wilson said, "It was the best deal
I ever made. I only had to be on Ethics for a year, and I get to stay on the
Kennedy Center for life."

When I spoke with Crile last year, he confirmed that he stood by his account
of the spiking of the Murtha ethics probe. Last night Mr. Wilson assured me
that the Crile book was "completely accurate." (The only complaint about any
facts in it, he said, had come from the heirs to a Texas oilman who was
briefly mentioned in it.) Mr. Wilson told me he and George Crile were 50-50
partners in the movie deal.
When I asked Mr. Wilson about the portions of the book that dealt with his
efforts to squelch the Ethics Committee probe of Mr. Murtha, he tersely
said, "I have no comment." He reiterated that Mr. Murtha remains his good
friend--they appeared together at a Pennsylvania fund-raising event for
Democratic candidates--and said that Mr. Murtha has been unfairly attacked
for his record in promoting earmarks.

In contrast to Sen. John McCain, whose experience in the 1990 Keating Five
scandal turned him into a good-government reformer, Mr. Murtha's brush with
infamy stirred in him a conviction that members of Congress deserve more
protection from ethics probes. In 1997 Mr. Murtha joined with Rep. Billy
Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican, in blocking outside groups and private
citizens from filing complaints directly with the House Ethics Committee.
Mr. Murtha also pushed for a law that would require the Justice Department
to reimburse the legal bills of any member of Congress it investigated if it
was shown the probe was not "substantially justified"--a privilege no other
American enjoyed. Only after Henry Hyde, then chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, objected was the bill amended to allow reimbursement for
anyone--member of Congress or not--acquitted in a "bad faith" prosecution.

Gary Ruskin, director of the liberal Congressional Accountability Project,
told Roll Call that "when it comes to institutional policing of corruption
in Congress, John Murtha is a one-man wrecking crew." Now with the support
of Ms. Pelosi, that "wrecking crew" stands just one ballot away from
becoming House majority leader. Should he win the sealed-ballot election of
his peers tomorrow, Democrats may have a hard time explaining just what has
changed regarding the Congress's "culture of corruption."

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